How to Disable Standby Mode on Your TV – and Does It Really Save Your Electricity Bill?

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“The Black Parade” turns 20 this year, and if that makes you feel old, you’re probably also at that age where you’re wondering if you can save some money on your energy bill by unplugging your TV overnight or when you go on vacation.

While it’s true that TVs used to be power-hungry devices, drawing a lot of power even in sleep or standby mode, we’ve come a long way since the early days of flat screens and CRTs (no, not that one).

Also: How to Disable ACR on Your TV

With better technology comes better energy efficiency and lower costs, meaning that unplugging your TV overnight is no longer as impactful, yet you can still gain full control over your TV’s power settings by disabling standby mode and the LED indicator on various models. Here’s how to do it, and more reasons why you should do it.

How to deactivate standby mode

Each brand sets up its menu options differently, and the ability to turn off energy-saving mode is often hidden in layers of settings. The only exception is if you have an Amazon-branded Fire TV, such as the Omni or 4-Series. For whatever reason, Amazon didn’t include an option to disable standby mode or turn off the obnoxiously bright LED indicator within user settings.

The only solution I found involved very complex debugging software, which frankly, doesn’t seem worth the headache. Thankfully, the rest of the major brands make it a lot easier:

• Samsung: Settings > System/General > Power & Energy > Standby Light
• Sony: Settings > System > ECO > Idle/Standby
• LG: Settings > General > System > Additional Settings > Standby Light
• Hisense: Settings > System > Advanced Settings > Power Indicator
• Tcl: Settings > System > Device Preferences > Standby/Power LED Indicator
• Insignia or Toshiba Fire TV: Settings > Preferences > Standby
• Roku: Settings > System > Power > Standby LED

cents are talking

If you’re like me and in the midst of your anger about turning off the lights when you leave the room you realized you’ve become your father, you probably remember how energy-guzzling TVs used to be. Especially early LCD and plasma models.

For those of us who have developed the habit of completely unplugging our flat-screens whenever we go on vacation or leave for the night, technology has come a long way in the last ten years. Televisions are more energy efficient, using LED technology to help reduce operating costs.

Also: How to Turn Off HDMI-CEC on Your TV

And yes, it’s annoying that nothing actually turns off completely anymore, the energy consumed in standby mode and LED indicators is just a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of your home.

according to US Energy Information AdministrationThe average cost of electricity per kilowatt hour is 17.24 cents. And since many modern TVs include information about how much power they consume in a year, it’s easy to calculate both the maximum operating cost and how much you actually save by disabling standby mode.

To put things in perspective, let’s compare two popular TV models: the LG G5 OLED and the Toshiba C350.

As you can see in the chart, the energy efficiency and operating costs of high-end OLED and entry-level LEDs are fairly similar. With only a 13kWh difference, the cost of using the LG G5 is only $2.32 more. And that’s assuming you’ve driven it for hours during the day. Both draw less than 0.5W of energy in standby mode.

Also: I stopped leaving these 7 common household appliances plugged in and my energy bill went down

To calculate the average cost per year in standby mode, we have a simple formula. Convert wattage to kilowatt hours by dividing by 1,000. Then multiply it by the number of hours it will be in standby and finally multiply the result by the national average electricity rate. For this little exercise, I assumed both screens would be in standby for at least 8 hours every day. So it should look something like this:

(.0005kWh X 8 hours) X .1724

Of course, your personal cost may be more or less depending on how much you actually use the TV, but in the broader scheme of things, 11 cents won’t make or break one. And with operating costs being so close between premium and budget TVs, it’s really a testament to how far technology has come in terms of energy efficiency.